Sunday March 1st 2015

Saturday.

Normally, being at Saturday we would be out and about, photographing things, moving onto somewhere else to photograph that. And so on.



Instead, we had a quiet day. A quiet day because except for a couple of hours in the morning, rain did fall from the sky. And kept falling.

So, after breakfast. And second breakfast, we went into town, I bought a new belt, some veg for Sunday dinner. Oh and the butcher in London Road for a joint of beef. For Sunday dinner. I like to plan ahead. Jools went to the bank, M&S, we met back up at the car and drove home, home in time for Fighting Talk on the radio, and an early dinner of cheesy beans on toast. A simple meal, but bloody lovely.

By twelve, the rain had begun to fall, so with the radio on, I settled down for an afternoon of photo editing, listening to football and snoozing on the sofa with scattered cups of tea and coffee.

From the kitchen window, rain fell like sheets across the valley, hiding the rest of the village from view. The cats did not go out, and were happy enough to keep us company by sleeping. If that is company.

For dinner we had sausages and sauteed potatoes, another fine meal, simple but nice.

We settled down in front of the TV to watch the last episode of a Very British Murder, then Reginald D Hunter's travelogue on music of the Deep South. A great show, light in tone, but racism was never far from the surface, but for the most part it seems things are getting better, other than the poverty of course. I rounded off the evening with several whiskys and a selection of Lone Justice tunes.

Sunday.

After a late night on the whisky, I awoke when the heating switched on at seven and laid in bed until half past, trying not to think about my headache. Would coffee help? I came downstairs to find the living room full of feathers: apparently Mulder had gotten bored with waiting for breakfast and had found his own. Coffee did help, as did a slow start of sitting on the sofa watching MOTD. Outside, dawn gave way to a glorious, cloudless morning.

The plan, was to sort out the front garden. Being ambitious, I had an idea of how to make the front garden look nice: we had bought a slate monolith last autumn to be a focal point. Well, after spending £150 on that, I had better follow through. The idea was to cover an area with a membrane, put in some edging, install monolith, cover with slate chippings that I rescued last September, and that would be that. We removed the paving slabs, the bird table, and I laid the membrane down, and I began to install the edging, slates, that would keep the chippings in place. I anticipated the job would take an hour.

What I had forgotten was how out of shape I was, and how unused I was to labour now. But, we got the membrane down, I put in the edging on one side, and hat brought us to lunch. Two scotch eggs and a large brew later, I pressed to complete the job before two so I could follow the big game on the computer. I dug the slates in, cheating on two sides by breaking then in half so not having to dig such a deep trench. We had broken the back of it, we moved the bags of chippings up from the shed, disturbing a sleeping toad sheltering under one of the bags.



We were a few short, so I went to B&Q for three more bags, back again, we filled the gaps, raked them flat, and all was done. Phew.

And it was just two o'clock, five minutes before kick off of the Old Farm Derby, City v Ipswich. It was not on the radio, and not on any TV stations we have, but on Twiter and the BBC I followed via text and tweets. 1 up at half time, scoring a scrambled second on the hour, and it never really seemed in doubt. Time ticked away, and we ran out winners. More important we had beaten a promotion rival and leapfrogged over then to 3rd in the table, just a point now from one of the automatic places after six wins on the bounce.



I watched the second half of the Ireland v England egg-chasing game, whilst listening to the good ol boys on Canary Call thanks to the magic of the interwebs to find that one chap was celebrating the win by taking his dog for a walk, and the dog had a City short on. Of course it did; and there were pictures to prove it.

At 5, I put the beef in the oven, the first one I have cooked this year, and soon the house was filled with the smells of a traditional roast. 90 minutes later we were tucking into dinner, at the end of a busy but productive weekend. Back to Denmark tomorrow, but should be home for a whole week from Friday. Imagine that....